Science
Related: About this forumComputers Can Predict Schizophrenia Based on How a Person Talks
A new study finds an algorithmic word analysis is flawless at determining whether a person will have a psychotic episode.
Although the language of thinking is deliberatelet me think, I have to do some thinkingthe actual experience of having thoughts is often passive. Ideas pop up like dandelions; thoughts occur suddenly and escape without warning. People swim in and out of pools of thought in a way that can feel, paradoxically, mindless.
Most of the time, people dont actively track the way one thought flows into the next. But in psychiatry, much attention is paid to such intricacies of thinking. For instance, disorganized thought, evidenced by disjointed patterns in speech, is considered a hallmark characteristic of schizophrenia. Several studies of at-risk youths have found that doctors are able to guess with impressive accuracythe best predictive models hover around 79 percentwhether a person will develop psychosis based on tracking that persons speech patterns in interviews.
A computer, it seems, can do better.
Thats according to a study published Wednesday by researchers at Columbia University, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in the Nature Publishing Group journal Schizophrenia. They used an automated speech-analysis program to correctly differentiatewith 100-percent accuracybetween at-risk young people who developed psychosis over a two-and-a-half year period and those who did not. The computer model also outperformed other advanced screening technologies, like biomarkers from neuroimaging and EEG recordings of brain activity.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/speech-analysis-schizophrenia-algorithm/402265/
I wonder if they check out GDP?
Thor_MN
(11,843 posts)yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)Schizophrenia is a serious condition that effects many good people. Not something to joke about.
fleur-de-lisa
(14,625 posts)And yes, it is a serious topic. And it was a fascinating article, but, jeez, lighten up, Francis.
newfie11
(8,159 posts)Duppers
(28,125 posts)I thought Thor's comment was light and appropriate. There are mental health issues in the GOP.
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)jkbRN
(850 posts)ty!
bananas
(27,509 posts)Downloading the pdf to read later.
Direct links:
html: http://www.nature.com/articles/npjschz201530
pdf: http://www.nature.com/articles/npjschz201530.pdf